A White Elephant in Class

The twenty-odd undergraduates in a morning economics class let out a collective breath of unease. During a discussion on social mobility in America, a girl had offhandedly suggested, “We [Harvard students] are all middle class anyways”. No one dared nod in assent—or shake his or her head in denial.

Etiquette columns have long singled out class, along with religion and politics, as gauche topics for conversation. At Harvard, though, we’ve long ignored the prohibition on the latter two. A typical lunch conversation in the dining hall might touch on the theological underpinning of the religious Right’s support for Israel, or a recent flurry of posters from Harvard Right to Life, but not whether you belong to a country club back home or receive financial aid. Why do we remain silent about the personal dimensions of class?

Class is still our dirty, little secret. We, like many Americans, prefer to pretend that class is something that exists out there. We can bemoan widening inequality America—even trumpet our own socioeconomic diversity (thanks to the Harvard Financial Aid initiative) to the outside world—without ever turning the gaze inward. Harvard students, many insist, occupy the same social playing field. Financial aid is generous; everyone eats the same dining hall food and lives in the same dorms. Due to public transportation and the paucity of parking in Cambridge, few students drive around flashy cars. In short, there are few ways for us to materially differentiate ourselves from each other.

The university is a temple to meritocracy, where the religious ardor of intellectualism purifies us of our class distinctions. To the extent that class does exist, it checks itself at Johnston gate. If legacy status gave you leg up in the admissions process, no one asks you about it once you’re here. Overt social elitism would be as shocking as racism, and condemned as such. Even some final clubs shield themselves from the shrill accusation of “classism” by waiving dues for cash-strapped members.

But, try as we might to suppress it, class at Harvard is like a cold sore: harmless but hard to miss. Globetrotting friends glibly recount their ski vacations at Vail or winter breaks in Fiji; BMWs line the parking lot between Lowell and the Fly; whole blocking groups oddly come from the same zip code.

Of course, class is not reducible to mere wealth. (Otherwise the most ostentatious of nouveau riches would be acceptable). Impeccable taste is key. Elaborate sartorial codes exist to this end. Middle class kids play dress up, donning blazers and cashmere their friends back home would surely ridicule.

Their more affluent peers—in the spirit of modesty, no doubt—prefer to make intimations of English country living, with green Barbour coats and tartan scarves. Even gaudy plastic jewelry is evidence of a campy sophistication, and can compensate for an otherwise dowdy wardrobe. Again, few students consciously intend to define themselves by class, it just happens.

The irony is that these fine class distinctions are either invisible or irrelevant to the outside world. The difference between a Harvard student from Greenwich and one from North Dakota is lost on the average American. Both are equally likely to be sipping fine scotch in oak-paneled clubrooms, sharing their contempt for the vulgar masses.

While many of us would rightly reject this caricature, we would not waste too much time doing so. Dwelling too long on the elaborate tapestry of social rules and symbols that would separate a country bumpkin from a blue blood at Harvard would betray an unhealthy obsession with status—as if one’s admissions letter was not enough to allay feelings of social insecurity.

Status anxiety is nothing new in America. Alexis de Tocqueville first remarked that the flipside of America’s democratic spirit is class anxiety. Due to the absence of aristocratic titles or estates, families are seldom blessed with status for more than a few generations. One group is always rising, while another is fading. Harvard and schools like it are at the epicenter of these social shifts. Such universities no longer educate the nation’s elite; now they make the nation’s elite.

Thus, bringing up the question of class at this institution seems to run counter to our ostensibly meritocratic ethos. Everyone claims to foreswear social snobbery—and its counterpart, envy.

Yet the subtle material and social differences—rarely acknowledged in public—that remain are at the source of our reticence. Distinctions in wealth and taste, we are told, no longer matter; we are judged by our intellect and character alone.

But even if we accept this idea of social valuation, obviously some insecurities still exist, and cannot be dissolved with platitudes. They are here to stay. Middle and working class students will never give the real reason why they can’t just jet set to London for the weekend because that might be admitting that, though we’re on our way to a place among the nation’s elite, we aren’t there yet.



Will Johnston ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears regularly.